Say what you will about Samsung, but it looks like they’re finally sinking some money and resources into delivering quality apps for their users. Today, the Korean company has pushed out three new camera apps, which are all variations on a theme, but are still fun to use.

The three apps, Artistic Effect, Fun Shot and Color Effect, are all Lenses that can be launched to give live filters for your camera. The apps themselves are all designed around the same UI, though each comes with a dozen or so uniquely themed filters. While that may seem redundant, it’s actually a smart move as it means you have less scrolling to do when selecting your filter. Not to mention, not everyone needs Fun Shot, which makes your images distorted for goofy results.

Here is the breakdown of the three new camera apps...

Artistic Effect

The lens is a bit gimmicky as it creates images akin to Sketch Camera. It’s certainly a neat effect, especially since the filters are live, though if you’re looking to make your photos pretty, this is more novelty than useful. Still, it’s well done at least.

This is straight up our most favorite new Lens for Samsung. It’s nothing fancy, just a traditional filter Lens that allows you to change the hue and tone of the image, giving you an older film look. Think of the Instagram-effect and you’ll understand. The filters though are well done and we could envisage using this Lens often.

Fun Shot

File this under novelty as well, Fun Shot allows you to select from a bunch of silly filters to give you a carnival mirror effect. It works well, though honestly we cringe whenever we see these types of images posted anywhere. But if you have kids, it could be a fun distraction.

Problem is not making new devices. Problem putting effort to sell them.
They did make a good device last year (ATIV S) with the top specs supported by WP8. But they never put any effort to sell them.
In fact they did not even release in major markets like USA, China, India. Its like they want it to fail.
I hope they put more effort to sell this time.

My feeling is that Samsung are waiting for GDR3 which will add support for Quad Core processors and 1080p displays so they can finally get some of what they believe to be high end hardware into the market.

HTC tried, they came out with two decent devices. But, carriers made some strange choices when they wanted a 8Gb 8X and HTC was too scared to issue a 32Gb device. Now the GDR2 rollout for the 8X was stopped because devices were starting to freeze for good.

you are right. wp is really picking up though. i cant say that i want it to though. microsoft already has the pc market and i remember what it was like when they were on top in both the phone and desktop markets. they were pretty lazy, which is what caused them to lose the market. I like seeing them try pretty hard right now. they should learn to truly listen to their user base.

I was told at a regional Sprint store that it would be out next Friday (16th). Not sure why Sprint is not advertising it yet. Maybe it has to do with the HTC agreement...exclusive for a certain period of time without being allowed to even mention the NEO.

Your posts rly do encompass all questions ppl normally would have. I didn't realize how many ppl skimmed or outright only read the first sentence before I came to this site. I actually enjoy participating in the comments and I shake my head everytime I see someone say or ask something established in the dang article!

All progress welcomed to this platform hey regardless of manufacturer. Iam definitely a Nokia man always have been but iam happy other companies are supporting this platform..... Nokia just does it better and is more dependant on its success as it does not have its fingers in other OS's like all the others

WP isn't a good market for multiple players. People are still questioning WP and RT. Failed miserably despite the growth WP has seen, and that is due to LUMIA and not WP itself. With all these low cost devices (especially android tabelts) it'll be difficult for Microsoft to penetrate. Google makes money off advertising and selling your personal info. People don't understand or care about that. I believe this is the only reason why android tablets are so cheap.

I'm looking into getting an Android tablet for under $150. So tempting...

Blasphemy! Your $150 android tab will get increasingly slower over time and it is an extremely unstable and unsecured os, optimized OS's such as WP and Apple run very smooth and fast on lesser hardware, from my research and testing android devices are far too fragmented and all slow down, get buggier and crash over time, also full of malware and ads. Being an open hacker friendly system has some major downsides, having said this I would keep an android tablet in the toilet for reading etc. I have many WPs and surface pro but I also have hard mounted my iPad into my cars dash for media and driving apps so I like to think I'm not biased, personally I prefer the windows ecosystem

WTF!!! In the last few weeks Samsung have been all over Windows Phone releasing apps including these today, not to mention rolling out GDR2 to EXISTING DEVICES before everyone else, including Nokia!!!!!

Worked out bad for HTC, probably costing a already struggling company a fair bit to replace all the phones their gdr2 update bricked..... Samsung was not first. Also I'm happy to wait as Nokia is also bringing amber along with it and it will be exhaustively tested to iron out any bugs which gdr2 clearly has/had

I hope they will put some effort behind Windows phone with GDR3.
If they aim to sell 10% of their smartphones with WP8, they can add 7+ million new users to the WP platform.
That will be a great boost to WP and bring even more apps.

I think Samsung just like to go against its competitors hard and strong. Now granted this is small, but the fact they set up offices near other competitors office, mimic alot of their innovation and styles and right now are completely dominating the mobile market, they want to put a footprint into everyone's head. If they release a low mid and high end WP by the time GDR3 comes, they could be an absolute competitor against Nokia. Its inevitable.

Just because Samsung releases three WP devices won't inevitably make them competitive.. Nokia isn't the best WP OEM solely because they make the most devices.. Nokia is the most popular because of the way they innovative, and the support they give to their product,, not to mention everything that they do for the entire WP platform... Until others do the same they will be no competition for Nokia in terms of making WP devices..

I think above all else, Samsung is a pragmatic company. I don't think they have any special loyalty to Google or Android. Its just that Android is the biggest platform right now. But they see WP marketshare is finally increasing. Its still low, so they wont dive in too hard, but they will invest a little money for stuff like this and keep churning out a few phone models a year. Meanwhile, some other companies (cough* Instagram cough*) seem to be run by fanboys or something and refuse to invest even a fractional amount of money.

Instagram is Facebook, we have official fb apps but not instagram. My guess is that apple or google are paying them not to produce an official app as this app is pretty much the only major app preventing a lot of ppl to cross platforms. Its not my thing but I believe Instance is more than sufficient.

More like they don't care what Rubino says because they made a decision to go on the complete opposite road on which carriers in the US they have chosen to release their devices (exclusively on the CDMA side).

Good point. Nokia has definitely put WP on the map and seems to be the only manufacturer that is improving and innovating the platform. I just love Nokia and really hope they NEVER run android on any of their products.

An app tile like for photos kinda exists already. But yea it does not fully move the app into that location. Just merely offers another opening location. I'd like a tile to put all my photo stuff in and video watching apps in to clean up some clutter myself.

We're the fantrolls? Take a look at yourself.
I'm also not "It's Nokia or nothing!", I think it's great that more companies are supporting Windows Phone! The more the better!
If anyones talking bull it's you.

Look at IDC quarterly report: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24257413..Samsung got 233% growth YoY on Windows Phone compared to 52.7 YoY growth on Android. Without much effort, they sold 1million windows phones. so i think we will see more "commited" effort from Samsung than before.

oo looks like Samsung has finally woken up from hibernation. Either that or someone added more coal to the fire to speed them up. Happy for all those ativ s users out there. Now it would be intresting to see if they keep up this momentum. Hopefully they announce a wp device at their conference, just hope they do not pull a stunt like last time - Ativ S first to be announced but last to be launched.

Samsung might take quite a bit away from Nokia in WP if they can grab Instagram and other top apps as timed exclusives, e.g 12 months or so. They have the weight to get these vendors to listen, I can't wait to see it.

I'm torn here on Samsung's commitment to WP. When WP7 came out the Focus was the best device for the longest time. Sadly, I was on Verizon and had to settle for the HTC Trophy. Of late, Samsung has seemed to put next to nothing for support of WP compared to Android. Can you imagine if Samsung delivered a compelling phone AND took a good chunk of their Android advertising behind WP? Wow....
My opinion is that Samsung is just keeping their options open. Keeping a toe in the WP pool just in case the Android pool starts to cool off and the WP pool starts to heat up.

I really like my Ativ S. Samsung have finally done what should have been available from Day 1 for all Windows Phones and even in Metro - Create your own pinnable folders :) (Caveat once created the order/ position within the folders cannot be changed) )